This week marks the 30th anniversary of cable television’s most popular week-long extravaganza: Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. Ronda Rousey appeared on Sunday night’s programming swimming with some of America’s favorite fish. I assume she provided the same ratings & YouTube boost that she does when she appears on Raw.

Pro wrestling has a lengthy history of shark involvement. Well, kind of. They aren’t as involved in the sports as bears, or dogs, or cats, or birds, or many different mammals. One could speculate that sharks would be more involved in wrestling if they could survive out of water. Wrestling & other sports have long been biased against competitors that are confined to oceans & aquariums.

Even so, here are the Top 5 Shark-Related Contributions to Wrestling.

5. San Jose’s Shark Tank

The SAP Center in San Jose is widely known as the Shark Tank thanks to their primary tenants, the NHL’s San Jose Sharks. WWE’s big fishes have swam in for four PPV events over the years: the 1998 Royal Rumble, SummerSlam 2001, The 2007 Great American Bash, & Payback 2017. The biggest event on any of these shows was at the 1998 Rumble, where Shawn Michaels got his career-ending injury in a casket match with The Undertaker. Kane set Undertaker’s casket on fire after the match, and somehow Taker came back sooner. Go figure.

In an interesting quirk, the Tank has had a different official name for each of WWE’s PPV events. In 1998 it was simply known as the San Jose Arena. Money came into the picture in 2001, and SummerSlam was held at the Compaq Center. Compaq was purchased by HP, and by the time 2007 rolled around the Bash was held at the HP Pavilion. SAP purchased the naming rights in 2013, and Payback was at the SAP Center. I can’t wait to see what this arena’s name is the next time it hosts a PPV. We’ll call it the Shark Tank either way.

4. Shark Girl

I was a big Daffney fan. Those of you that listen to the Arc of Wrestling know that I was fond of most of the women in late-period WCW. It was a great time to be a socially awkward teenager that couldn’t get laid. Between women’s wrestling being at its most scantly clad, RollerJam’s spandex & Buffy the Vampire Slayer having a ridiculously large roster of pretty ladies, it truly was the Golden Age. I feel for today’s socially awkward teenagers that can’t get laid.

After WCW closed, Daffney bounced around from place to place. One of those places was TNA, where she adopted the persona of Shark Girl. Shark Girl mostly served as a valet for the next person on our list, but she did wrestle on occasion on the independent circuit. Shark Girl even had a match with Daffney at IWA Mid-South’s Volcano Girls 2, but I don’t know who donned the hood on that occasion.

That all being said, I’m more into the goth look than the animal costumes. Call me crazy.

3. Shark Boy

I remember Les Thatcher & the HWA guys raving about Shark Boy back in the day. He was a real talented worker with a gimmick that the boys loved, so he got a good amount of hype in the Cincinnati area. I wouldn’t say he ever lived up to their high expectations, but he did have a couple of lengthy stints in TNA where he was well-received by the audience.

There are two things I remember Shark Boy for. One was his weird tag team with New Jack. The other is where he got knocked on his head, woke up & became Stone Cold Shark Boy.

Christopher Daniels as Curry Man and Shark Boy doing a Stone Cold impression. You had to love TNA.

2. The Shark

John Tenta was a mountain of a man that went through his wrestling career with a variety of natural disaster-inspired names. First he was Earthquake in the WWF. Then he became Avalanche in WCW. Once the Three Faces of Fear gave way to the Dungeon of Doom, it was time to go in a different direction.

Shark Attack was an unnatural disaster. I guess you could refer to the DoD that way as well. They were WCW’s top heel faction for a time, full of unbelievable gimmicks & nonsense like The Shark. WCW eventually got real, and so did John Tenta.

He wasn’t a fish! Eventually Tenta went back to the WWF and became Golga, a masked Oddity obsessed with Eric Cartman for reasons left unexplained. Somewhat lost in the goofiness was the fact that Tenta was among the better big men in the ring of his time & could be used as a threat to any babyface.

1. The Shark Cage

Cages & pro wrestling go together like peanut butter & jelly. So it only makes sense that a cage traditionally lowered in the water to give marine biologists the chance to look at sharks with a modicum of safety would find usage in the sport.

Back in the olden days, the shark cage had matches inside of it. The babyface would talk about how the heel wouldn’t be able to avoid the punishment they deserved. Fans got excited by the idea of what would happen when their favorite got their hands on the bad guy.

The problem? Getting your hands on each other is pretty much all you can do.

As the Jay Strongbow vs. Don Kent match above illustrates, the shark cage is too confining to provide action. Aside from choking & punching, you can’t do much inside a Shark cage with an opponent. It sounded good as an idea, but you could only do it once before people caught on.

There had to be another way

Then somebody came up with a better idea. What if the manager of the bad guy was forced into the shark cage so they couldn’t interfere in the match? In a big arena you can raise the cage up in the air so the fans can see the manager helplessly watch their charges. Of course, the manager would fight being put in the cage, making it more satisfying when they were put in.

Jim Cornette being forced into a shark cage at the 1988 Great American Bash is a perfect example. He also had to wear a straitjacket, which goes to show how big a problem he was for the Midnight Express’s opponents. The Fantastics finally got a fair shake on this night.

Back when Jim Crockett Promotions did shark cage matches, the cage would be positioned in the entranceway. WWE puts the cage directly above the ring. That makes for a better camera shot & theoretically adds drama, but also makes it obvious that the person inside will drop stuff down to the ring, get out, or both. It rarely ends well for the good guy.

Which will make it that much better when Brock Lesnar loses the Universal Championship while Paul Heyman is in a shark cage hanging above the ring.